“Happy 40, You’re Flying Solo”
With a milestone birthday lurking around the corner my husband has decided he wants to end our ADHD marriage. But what if there is nothing else out there?
The marriage is, for all intents and purposes, over – and not by my choice. The husband has repeatedly told me that he doesn’t want to be married; he doesn’t love me anymore. We are incompatible, there’s nothing that I have that he wants, and he’s not attracted to me. I need to find someone who wants a house, kids, and to come home and have dinner with me. We both deserve to be happy, and he’s not.
The husband isn’t interested in couples counseling. He feels like I am always making demands of him, that he is always doing things for me – even if I disagree. He primarily remembers the bad times. So with a milestone birthday a week away, I deal with this somewhat heart-breaking reality that I am with someone 15 years my senior, who only briefly loved me, and has given up on making our marriage work.
He said he wants to celebrate the holidays and my birthday with me, but that’s it. My attempts to talk about taking him out for his birthday have fallen on deaf ears. He gets angry and irate. “I don’t want anything for my birthday, especially from you,” he snaps. I now realize that I made a mistake proposing to him. It was a bad idea, and I will never do it again.
In the New Year, he will file the papers. I can live here until we are formally divorced. I have a legal right to be here, but what is the point of being in the same space with someone who doesn’t want your there, even if it saves a little money? There is nothing I can do but wait for the process to go through. It’s a bad, unhealthy situation.
On many days, especially when I am lonely, I don’t believe there is someone better out there. Should just settle for a man who is emotionally, financially and physically unavailable? Is something, even a scrap, better than nothing? I am fearful that no one else will want me, ADHD warts and all, and that I will die single with lots of cats.
I try to tell myself I can beat the odds. That if I work harder and harder, I can have a successful marriage – not one that is a sad and lost cause. But as I celebrate the big 4-0, one question haunts me, “Will I ever find someone who loves me as I am?”
